Search

From May 20 through June 3rd, there is to be no discussion of US politics. All existing threads on the subject will be closed. People can start new ones once the hiatus is over. See the thread in Trouble Tickets for more info.

Go to page

Go to page

Registered User

So, inspired by Bira's recently begun Let's Read of 4th Edition's Monster Manual and its Monster Vault update, which you can find here, I've been thinking of doing my own take on such a project. I don't want to steal Bira's thunder by examining the monsters from the 2nd and 3rd Monster Manual - I honestly want to see their take on them - but... Dragon & Dungeon were full of articles that added new monsters, so I figured it'd be okay to do a Let's Read of those.

In addition to a number of semi-regular article series, 4e Dragon & Dungeon also had many one-shot articles which discussed a specific kind of new monster. Below is linked my magnum opus; a complete index of every single article from Dungeon & Dragon for 4th edition, with a basic summary of what content is featured in each article. I'm open to discussing where to begin, but here's a handy guide to the monster-related serial articles:

Creature Incarnations: New monster "types" for a monster already debuting in a Monster Manual or other sourcebook. Creature Incarnations: Kobolds contains new kobold statblocks. CI: Orcs is new orcs. And so forth.

Bestiary: New monsters, usually based around a specific theme.

Ecology of the X: These vary between detailing monster races and detailing PC races; the very first article in this series was on Fire Archons, afterwards it switched to PC races for a long while, then became about monsters again.

Lords of Chaos: Details on specific Primordials (Archomentals), the rulers of the Elemental Chaos.

Court of Stars: Details on specific Archfey from the Feywild.

Codex of Betrayal: Details on specific Archdevils from Baator.

Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Details on specific Demon Princes/Lords from the Abyss.

After the handful of suggestions I got, I'm going to try going in chronological order, through Dragon and Dungeon simultaneously. That means I should get two articles done every week, at the bare minimum, and preferably two articles per day.

I've still got to finish it up with Dungeon issues #210 to #221, but those are all purely adventure issues so yeah, I figured this was good to share now. Also, you're welcome, Eklev; I was disappointed with how the Dragondex stopped updating when the print issues were cancelled, so I figured somebody ought to make a 4e one. Shame that there's no point doing this for 5e.

Something Terrible

Registered User

The two obvious orders are chronologically and by article type. Which one works better depends on you: would you find doing article after article of the same type to be boring, or focusing?

Maybe doing all the ones about creature types, rather than individuals, would be more tractable since the ones on individuals tend to be much longer and have the more background details. And as you said you already started a separate thread for them.

Follower of the Way

Registered User

Ooh, very nice. I had been planning on doing this myself, but I have been falling way behind with my other let's read project, so I will be eager to see another take on these articles. I will be watching with great interest.